- nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

China's Surveillance State Hits Rare Resistance From Its Own Subjects - Forbes India
by Alberto Cammozzo July 16, 2022

July 16, 2022

<https://www.forbesindia.com/article/news/chinas-surveillance-state-hits-rar…> Chinese artists have staged performances to highlight the ubiquity of surveillance cameras. Privacy activists have filed lawsuits against the collection of facial recognition data. Ordinary citizens and establishment intellectuals alike have pushed back against the abuse of COVID tracking apps by authorities to curb protests. Internet users have shared tips on how to evade digital monitoring. As China builds up its vast surveillance and security apparatus, it is running up against growing public unease about the lack of safeguards to prevent the theft or misuse of personal data. The ruling Communist Party is keenly aware of the cost to its credibility of any major security lapses: Last week, it moved systematically to squelch news about what was probably the largest known breach of a Chinese government computer system, involving the personal information of as many as 1 billion citizens. The breach dealt a blow to Beijing, exposing the risks of its expansive efforts to vacuum up enormous amounts of digital and biological information on the daily activities and social connections of its people from social media posts, biometric data, phone records and surveillance videos. The government says these efforts are necessary for public safety: to limit the spread of COVID, for instance, or to catch criminals. But its failure to protect the data exposes citizens to problems like fraud and extortion and threatens to erode people’s willingness to comply with surveillance. “You never know who is going to sell or leak your information,” said Jewel Liao, a Shanghai resident whose details were among those released in the leak. “It’s just a bit unusual to see that even the police are vulnerable too.” China, which has been racing to implement one of the world’s toughest data privacy regimes, frequently excoriates companies for mishandling data. But authorities rarely point fingers at the country’s other top collector of personal information: the government itself. Security researchers say the leaked database, apparently used by the police in Shanghai, had been left online and unsecured for months. It was exposed after an anonymous user posted in an online forum offering to sell the vast trove of data for 10 Bitcoin, or about $200,000. The New York Times confirmed parts of a sample of the database released by the anonymous user, who posted under the name ChinaDan. The government’s efforts to institute safeguards have lagged behind its own push to collect information. In recent years, The Times has reviewed other leaked databases used by the police in China that were left online with little to no protection; some contained facial recognition records and ID scans of people in a Muslim ethnic minority region. Now there are signs that people are growing wary of the government and public institutions, too, as they see how their own data is being used against them. Last month, a nationwide outcry erupted over the apparent abuse of COVID-19 tracking technology by local authorities. Protesters fighting to recover their savings from four rural banks in the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou found that the mobile apps used to identify and isolate people who might be spreading COVID-19 had turned from green — meaning safe — to red, a designation that would prevent them from moving freely. “There is no privacy in China,” said Silvia Si, 30, a protester whose health code had turned red. Authorities in Zhengzhou, under pressure to account for the episode, later punished five officials for changing the codes of more than 1,300 customers. Even when the COVID-19 tracking technologies are used for their stated purpose, more people seem willing to ask if the surveillance is excessive. On Wednesday, a blogger in Beijing posted on Weibo that he was refusing to wear an electronic bracelet to track his movements while in isolation, saying that the device was an “electronic shackle” and an infringement on his privacy. The post was liked around 60,000 times, and users flooded his post with responses. Many said it reminded them of the treatment of criminals; others called it a ploy to surreptitiously collect personal information. The post was later taken down by censors, the blogger said. In recent years, individuals have sought to draw attention to privacy concerns. In 2019, a law professor in Hangzhou, a prominent tech hub in eastern China, sued a local zoo for forcing him to submit facial recognition data to enter, the first such lawsuit in China. He won the case. Starting in late 2020, several Chinese cities began banning neighborhood committees from forcing residents to undergo biometric monitoring to enter their compounds. Around the same time, toilet paper dispensers using facial recognition were removed from public bathrooms in the southern Chinese city of Dongguan following public outrage. In online forums like Zhihu, a Quora-like platform, Chinese users trade advice on how to evade surveillance (tips include wearing hats and masks and pointing flashlights at security cameras). More than 60% of Chinese people say facial recognition technology has been abused, according to a study of more than 20,000 Chinese jointly conducted in late 2020 by a Chinese think tank and a government task force. More than 80% expressed concern about whether and how facial recognition data would be stored. “The rise of the public’s awareness of data privacy is an inevitable trend,” said Dragon Zheng, an artist based in the southern province of Guangxi whose practice explores the interaction of technology and governance. In 2016, Zheng installed security cameras inside a large exhibition hall, which streamed live footage to a monitoring room set up in the center of the hall. Visitors were invited to enter the room, where they could manipulate the cameras and experience what Zheng called the feeling of “monitoring and being monitored, controlling and being controlled.” Still, he emphasized that the risks and advantages of technology were not unique to China. “Technology is like Pandora’s box,” Zheng said. “Once it’s open, how it is used depends on whose hands it falls into.” Few Chinese citizens have publicly questioned the government about its collection of personal data. Part of that could be a result of the government’s thorough censorship and the threats to personal safety of criticizing the government. But many residents also see the handover of data as a necessary trade-off for security and convenience. “There’s always been this split identity when it comes to privacy awareness in China,” said Samm Sacks, a researcher on technology policy at Yale Law School and New America. “People are far more trusting overall in how government entities handle their personal information and far more suspicious about the corporate sector.”

1 0

Borse di partecipazione per studenti al Festival di Informatici Senza Frontiere (Rovereto, 20-22 Ottobre 2022)
by Patrignani Norberto July 15, 2022

July 15, 2022

Carissim*, segnalo e invito a far circolare il bando in allegato per 15 borse di partecipazione per altrettanti studenti e studentesse delle scuole superiori, studenti e studentesse universitarie e dottorandi/e, le borse coprono le spese di viaggio, vitto ed alloggio a Rovereto durante il periodo di svolgimento del Festival di Informatici Senza Frontiere (Rovereto, 20-22 ottobre 2022). Grazie! Norberto Le borse copriranno le spese di viaggio, vitto ed alloggio a Roveretodurante il periodo di svolgimento del Festival.

1 0

Google Analytics 4, GDPR... e la società cibernetica che vogliamo costruire.
by Giacomo Tesio July 14, 2022

July 14, 2022

Salve a tutti! Spero di far cosa gradita nel riportarvi alcuni passaggi di un interessante dibattito pubblico che sta animando gli addetti ai lavori ma apparentemente non riesce ad uscire dal proprio alveo. Il casus belli è la legittimità della nuova versione Google Analytics, ma il dibattito si sta rapidamente allargando alla legittimità di tutti i trasferimenti transfrontalieri che comportano gli stessi problemi: - il primo articolo è di Pietro Biase, presidente di Open Genova [1] ed è intitolato "Privacy, Google Analytics 4 è fumo negli occhi: ecco perché non risolve il problema" https://www.agendadigitale.eu/sicurezza/privacy/monitorapa-risponde-a-googl… - il secondo articolo è di Roberto Guiotto e Matteo Zambon, fondatori di Tag Manager Italia [2] ed è intitolato "Google Analytics 4, non è illegale: come usarlo bene ed evitare problemi col Gdpr" https://www.agendadigitale.eu/sicurezza/privacy/google-analytics-4-non-e-il… - l'ultimo opera mia e consiste in una risposta ufficiale di Monitora PA: "Google Analytics 4: Monitora PA risponde a Tag Manager Italia" https://monitora-pa.it/2022/07/14/GoogleAnalytics4_MonitoraPA_risponde_a_Ta… Il dibattito in corso è ovviamente molto più esteso e cerchiamo di tenerne traccia da mesi sulla home page di Monitora PA [3], ma questi tre articoli hanno il pregio di costituire una sorta di confronto dialettico e civile fra valori ed interessi antitetici. Inoltre in essi vi è assoluto accordo su un punto, espresso impeccabilmente da Tag Manager Italia: > è importante sottolineare che ciò che viene contestato a Google > Analytics, ossia la potenziale violazione alle condizioni di > legittimità del trasferimento di dati al di fuori dell’Europa, è – > con buona probabilità – una caratteristica comune a centinaia (o più > probabilmente migliaia) di software di utilizzo comune nell’ambito > del web marketing e del web hosting. > > Non è un mistero che il web marketing contemporaneo si basi in > larghissima parte su tecnologie e servizi ospitati su server > controllati da aziende USA (es. Facebook Ads, Google Ads, YouTube > Ads, etc.) > > Di conseguenza [...] è ragionevole ritenere > che le piattaforme pubblicitarie Ads utilizzate dalla stragrande > maggioranza dei web marketer, ma anche i software di email marketing, > i CRM, le piattaforme di Content Delivery Network, i web hosting, > etc. si trovino in una posizione simile rispetto a quella di Google > Analytics. > > [...] è un dato di fatto che i principi di funzionamento di tutte le > piattaforme sopra citate (nonché la nazionalità delle aziende che le > erogano) non sono particolarmente dissimili da quelli di Google > Analytics. Anche le conclusioni partono da osservazioni condivise: > Il 60% dei cittadini europei acquista online; il fatturato globale > dell’e-commerce in Europa vale 732 miliardi di dollari; la sola spesa > in digital advertising in Europa è stimata in 57,64 miliardi di > dollari nel 2022. Le conclusioni economiche che ne deriviamo sono però antitetiche: Tag Manager Italia conclude chiedendosi > In attesa di un accordo politico e giuridico che regolamenti la > questione, chi difende la produttività delle aziende del settore > digital e tutela il posto di lavoro di chi in queste aziende è > occupato? Monitora PA invece pone un diverso interrogativo > chi difende la produttività delle aziende italiane ed europee che > competono con Google & friends, senza appoggi politici [4], senza > sovvenzioni militari [5] e... rispettando pure la Legge? Spero che tutto questo possa essere di vostro interesse e che magari vogliate anche voi arricchire questo dibattito con le vostre prospettive. A presto! Giacomo [1] https://associazione.opengenova.org/ [2] https://www.tagmanageritalia.it/ [3] https://monitora-pa.it/ [4] https://www.key4biz.it/piccolo-e-importante-anche-per-il-cloud-il-gigantism… [5] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/thousands-contracts-highlight-quiet-…

7 10

"Contra Chrome": il ruolo di Chrome (il browser) nell'universo Google
by Damiano Verzulli July 14, 2022

July 14, 2022

Molti, in lista, sono certo ne siano gia' a conoscenza. Ma a qualcuno potrebbe tornare utile... Mi riferisco a Scott McCloud [1], fumettista americano, che nel 2008 si vide commissionata da Google la realizzazione di un fumetto [2] su quello che, ai tempi, sarebbe stato il "nuovo" browser che stava per essere rilasciato: Google Chrome. Lo stesso Scott, a 14 anni di distanza, ha sentito l'esigenza di "auto-commissionarsi" un aggiornamento del proprio fumetto dovuto allo snaturamento di quello che aveva raccontato 14 anni prima. L'update, dal titolo "Contra Chrome", è questo [3] A pochi mesi dall'uscita di "Contra Chrome", l'Associazione "Copernicani" ne ha derivato la versione "in italiano", pubblicata recentemente [4] Certamente chi segue questa ML è in grado di fruire della versione inglese. Tuttavia, per favorire la diffusione di "Contra Chrome" anche --e soprattutto-- ad un pubblico di non-addetti-ai-lavori, ritengo sia utile far riferimento a quella in Italiano. La traduzione è eccellente. I contenuti sono estremamente chiari e ben argomentati. È decisamente un testo da diffondere, soprattutto percheé espone molto chiaramente, e con parole e concetti estremamente "semplici", gran parte di quei temi "alti" che, spesso, si discutono su questa lista (privacy, capitalismo della sorveglianza, modelli di business delle big-tech, possibili impatti a livello democratico, etc.) Un caro saluto, DV P.S.: ne esistono anche le versioni PDF, comode per l'off-line: inglese [5] e italiano [6] [1] https://scottmccloud.com/7-consulting/index.html [2] https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/big_00.html [3] https://contrachrome.com/ [4] https://copernicani.it/un-fumetto-ci-spiega-come-chrome-sia-diventato-una-m… [5] https://contrachrome.com/ContraChrome_en.pdf [6] https://copernicani.it/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/ContraChrome_IT_final.pdf -- Damiano Verzulli e-mail: damiano(a)verzulli.it --- possible?ok:while(!possible){open_mindedness++} --- "...I realized that free software would not generate the kind of income that was needed. Maybe in USA or Europe, you may be able to get a well paying job as a free software developer, but not here [in Africa]..." -- Guido Sohne - 1973-2008 http://ole.kenic.or.ke/pipermail/skunkworks/2008-April/005989.html

1 0

What the Metaverse Is (Really) and Why We Need to Know About It
by don Luca Peyron July 13, 2022

July 13, 2022

Un buon pezzo da un punto di vista diverso dal solito Buona lettura dl https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/cyber.2022.0124 _________________________ don Luca Peyron Direttore Ufficio per la Pastorale Universitaria Arcidiocesi di Torino www.universitari.to.it via XX settembre 83, Torino tel. 011 5156239

1 0

ANNUAL CONFERENCE of the Master in Intellectual Property | 15 luglio 2022, ore 9.15-13.00
by Nexa Media July 13, 2022

July 13, 2022

Gentilissimi, Vi invitiamo a partecipare alla *Conferenza Annuale del Master in Intellectual Property*: /*International Seminar on "Intellectual Property, Resilience and Recovery"*/, organizzato dal World Intellectual Property Organization, ITC ILO e Università di Torino, che si terrà *venerdì 15 luglio*, dalle ore 9.15 alle ore 13.00, presso il Centro Internazionale di Formazione dell'Organizzazione Internazionale del Lavoro, Viale Maestri del Lavoro, 10 - Torino. L'evento sarà inoltre fruibile on-line qui <https://itcilo-org.zoom.us/j/81866346384?pwd=a0loNXRlbnBNeCs5M2ZlRGh2QW94dz…>. Passcode: 12345 Partecipano al convegno, tra gli altri: *Prof. Alessandro Cogo*, Faculty Fellow del Centro Nexa, Università degli studi di Torino; *Prof. Maurizio Borghi*, Trustee del Centro Nexa, Università degli studi di Torino; *Prof. Marco Ricolfi*, Co-Fondatore e Co-Direttore del Centro Nexa, Università degli studi di Torino. Maggiori informazioni e il programma completo della conferenza sono disponibili alla pagina: https://nexa.polito.it/annual-conference-master-intellectual-property <https://nexa.polito.it/annual-conference-master-intellectual-property> <https://nexa.polito.it/annual-conference-master-intellectual-property> Si prega di confermare la propria partecipazione, sia online che in presenza, al seguente indirizzo email: llm_ip(a)itcilo.org Cordiali saluti, -- Anita Botta Communication Manager Nexa Center for Internet & Society Politecnico di Torino – DAUIN Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24 - 10129 Torino web: https://nexa.polito.it/ mail: anita.botta(a)polito.it tel: 011 090 7219

1 0

"Meet the Ex-CIA Agents Deciding Facebook’s Content Policy"
by J.C. DE MARTIN July 13, 2022

July 13, 2022

*Meet the Ex-CIA Agents Deciding Facebook’s Content Policy * Alan Macleod July 12th, 2022 It is an uncomfortable job for anyone trying to draw the line between “harmful content and protecting freedom of speech. It’s a balance”, Aaron says. In this official Facebook video <https://about.facebook.com/regulations/>, Aaron identifies himself as the manager of “the team that writes the rules for Facebook”, determining “what is acceptable and what is not.” Thus, he and his team effectively decide what content the platform’s 2.9 billion active users see and what they don’t see. Aaron is being interviewed in a bright warehouse-turned-studio. He is wearing a purple sweater and blue jeans. He comes across as a very likable, smiley person. It is not an easy job, of course, but someone has to make those calls. “Transparency is incredibly important in the work that I do,” he says. Aaron is CIA. Or at least he was until July 2019, when he left his job as a senior analytic manager at the agency to become senior product policy manager for misinformation at Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. In his 15-year career, Aaron Berman rose to become a highly influential part of the CIA. For years, he prepared and edited the president of the United States’ daily brief, “wr[iting] and overs[eeing] intelligence analysis to enable the President and senior U.S. officials to make decisions on the most critical national security issues,” especially on “the impact of influence operations on social movements, security, and democracy,” his LinkedIn profile <https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/FireShot-Capture-0…> reads. None of this is mentioned in the Facebook video. [...] continua qui: https://www.mintpressnews.com/meet-ex-cia-agents-deciding-facebook-content-…

1 0

Inside a radical new project to democratize AI - A group of over 1,000 AI researchers has created a multilingual large language model bigger than GPT-3—and they’re giving it out for free
by Vetro' Antonio July 12, 2022

July 12, 2022

Segnalo il lancio del nuovo modello linguistico BLOOM che potrebbe stabilire nuovi standard di responsabilità nel settore dell’ IA: secondo quanto riportato dall’articolo del MIT review indicato sotto: è stato costruito da più di 1000 ricercatori, usando una grande varietà di sorgenti dati per le diverse lingue, condividendo i dettagli sulla raccolta dei dati, l'addestramento, il test, e l’uso del modello è disciplinato da una licenza di “AI responsabile” https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/07/12/1055817/inside-a-radical-new-pr… antonio

1 0

The Uber files | The Guardian
by Alberto Cammozzo July 12, 2022

July 12, 2022

<https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/uber-files> In particolare segnalo due pezzi: <https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/jul/12/uber-paid-academics-six-figure…> Uber paid high-profile academics in Europe and the US hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce reports that could be used as part of the company’s lobbying campaign. The Uber files, a cache of thousands of confidential documents leaked to the Guardian, reveal lucrative deals with several leading academics who were paid to publish research on the benefits of its economic model. The reports were commissioned as Uber wrestled with regulators in key cities around the world. University economists were targeted in France and Germany where enforcement by the authorities was increasingly fierce in 2014-15. One report by a French academic, who asked for a €100,000 consultancy fee, was cited in a 2016 Financial Times report as evidence that Uber was a “route out of the French banlieues”, delighting Uber executives. <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/11/uber-files-democracy-…> There were taxis before there was Uber, just as there were bookshops before Amazon and friends before Facebook. A large part of innovation is new ways to deliver old ideas. Technology gives the innovator an edge by lowering costs, enabling nimbler delivery and outcompeting established traders who are stuck with obsolescent methods. That is the foundational myth of Silicon Valley folklore. It was the story that Uber propagated about itself in the years of its most explosive growth from a service for hailing rides around San Francisco to a global tech powerhouse. Here was the archetypal digital disruption – an app to match demand to supply with a slickness that blew competition off the road. When those competitors (licensed taxi drivers) complained, their objections were dismissed by the newcomer as the death rattle of monopolists and luddites who were getting in the way of progress. There was then, and still is, an argument to be had about regulation that inhibits innovation, and when it needs to change in step with changing times. That debate looks somewhat different in the light of leaked communications, dating from between 2014 and 2017 and published yesterday by the Guardian, showing the ruthless, aggressive methods that Uber used to force entry into various markets around the world. The company’s mercenary ethos is encapsulated in an exchange between senior executives discussing the threat to Uber drivers from attack in Paris, when the city’s established taxi operators went on strike. Travis Kalanick, Uber’s co-founder and former chief executive, wanted his drivers to defy the strike with mass civil disobedience. When warned that this might provoke violent retaliation, Kalanick responded: “I think it’s worth it. Violence guarantee[s] success.” The implication, which Uber denies, is that the company saw the threat to its drivers as part of a suite of public relations tools, alongside its many levers of private influence, to press for regulatory change. The scale of that operation, recruiting top politicians and power brokers around the globe to agitate for the company’s interests, is breathtaking. (Also expensive. In 2016 alone, the company spent $90m on lobbying.) Uber now says it is under different management with a different modus operandi. Kalanick left the company in 2017. It’s not unusual for an ambitious young company to pursue commercial interests with abrasive force. Ruthlessness is a historic driver of economic evolution. Some innovators have a philanthropic streak, others are rapacious. The pattern across history is that technology smashes its way into an economy and only later, once the wider implications are visible, does society organise a political response to mitigate the downsides. The Industrial Revolution generated phenomenal wealth for industrialists before there were laws against child labour. It took workers organising themselves into trade unions to bring a counterweight to forces that tended naturally towards mass exploitation and poverty pay. (Only last year, the UK supreme court upheld an employment tribunal ruling against Uber, which had claimed that it didn’t need to provide its drivers with the minimum wage, paid leave or pensions because they were not technically categorised as workers.) The success of liberal democracy – the best model yet devised for organising people into prosperous and free societies – depends on a balance between the wealth-generating impetus of the market and the obligations politics must impose on business for the greater good. Today, the difference between mainstream left and right in economic policy has come down to the question of where to adjust the levels between those competing demands; where the emphasis falls between the individual freedom to get rich and the collective duty to share. Periodically that distinction is declared irrelevant by the forward march of history. But it keeps bouncing back. The Marxist project to eliminate capitalism entirely degenerated into tyranny and bankruptcy wherever it was tried in the 20th century. That failure was then seized as moral vindication by free-market fundamentalists who saw any state regulation of the economy as an assault on liberty. The post-cold war triumphalist moment for the west coincided with the digital revolution, producing a culture of arrogance and political complacency around the new-tech economy. The Silicon Valley ethos combined California’s gold-rush model of lawless capitalism with traces of utopian evangelism that the hippies had brought to San Francisco. The result was a cultish veneration of the internet startup as a new kind of business to which old rules did not apply, and whose purpose was improving humanity as well as making money. The Uber files are a snapshot of a particular moment – the peak of political credulity and negligence around the growing power of tech companies. But the basic rules of the new digital economy turned out to be not so different from the old analogue ones. The type of regulation that might be needed to restrain corporate excess will be different in sectors that didn’t exist a generation ago. The pattern of politics getting captured by corporate lobbyists is dismally familiar. The revelation of Uber’s sharp practices tells a simple truth about the tech revolution. It is the same one that is told by the arduous working conditions in an Amazon warehouse and the poisoned reservoirs of public debate where Facebook discharges hatred and misinformation. The cost of innovation might be invisible to the consumer, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. And the job of democratic politicians is to be guardians of public interest, not the lubricants to private gain.

1 0

Memento | 153° Mercoledì di Nexa | 13 Luglio 2022
by Nexa Media July 11, 2022

July 11, 2022

Gentilissimi, vi ricordiamo che *mercoledì 13 luglio**,**alle ore 18.00*, si svolgerà il 153° Mercoledì di Nexa, con un incontro dal titolo: /*"I meccanismi di cooperazione e coerenza per la definizione di casi relativi a trattamenti transfrontalieri a quattro anni dall'applicazione del GDPR"*/. Ospite: *Monica A. Senor* (Funzionario presso l'Autorità garante per la protezione dei dati personali e Fellow Centro Nexa). L'Avv. Senor, partendo da un'analisi sul concreto funzionamento dei meccanismi di cooperazione e coerenza e di alcune importanti decisioni su casi transfrontalieri adottate nell'ultimo anno, svilupperà nel corso dell'incontro alcune considerazioni sul tema dell'enforcement del GDPR e sulle sue prospettive future, anche alla luce del pacchetto digitale e sulla strategia dei dati della Commissione europea. Sarà possibile partecipare al seminario connettendosi al seguente indirizzo: https://didattica.polito.it/VClass/NexaEvent Sarà possibile guardare la diretta streaming dell'incontro al seguente link: https://youtu.be/tfzg3Y3IzoA Maggiori informazioni sull'evento sono disponibili alla pagina: https://nexa.polito.it/mercoledi-153 Vi ricordiamo che trattandosi dell'ultimo Mercoledì di Nexa prima della pausa estiva al termine dell'incontro ci sarà, come di consueto, un brindisi virtuali per salutarci e augurarci buone vacanze. Cordialmente,   -- Anita Botta Communication Manager Nexa Center for Internet & Society Politecnico di Torino – DAUIN Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24 - 10129 Torino web: https://nexa.polito.it/ mail: anita.botta(a)polito.it tel: 011 090 7219

1 0